Woodstock, Mona Lisa, Red Squirrels and a Jewish Lament

The closest I got to Woodstock was marrying a woman who had a ticket to the 1969 three day festival but chose not to attend. 

With three of her friends Gilda bought $18 tickets to the transcendental festival after seeing a poster in Greenwich Village near where she worked for Hartz Mountain during the summer between her sophomore and junior years at Brooklyn College. Delores, Karen and Gilda would travel upstate to Bethel, NY, in Barbara’s car as she was the only one with a driver’s license and a car. 

This was nearly a half year before I showed up on Gilda’s radar, or she on mine, so the fact that she was madly infatuated with another young man at the time was not a cause of concern to me. During the summer of 1969 I was enjoying another splendid eight weeks as a division head in a sleepaway camp, Kfar Masada, in Rensselaerville, NY. 

As fate would have it, Gilda’s longing for a date with her heartthrob came to fruition on the same weekend as the Woodstock concert. She chose amour over music, sold her ticket, and bid her friends happy times.

They never made it to Yasgur’s farm. Traffic, overwhelming traffic, kept them and tens of thousands others from reaching their destination. Her friends pulled off Route 17 and found a church to sleep in on the floor. They went home the second day of the concert. 

As you undoubtedly figured out, Gilda’s love interest failed to reciprocate. Our paths crossed, repeatedly, during the next school semester. We began dating in December 1969. Yes, 1969 was a very good year.

Mona Lisa, Mon Amour: August used to be a good time to see the Mona Lisa at the Louvre. Parisians generally exit the city during August, leaving tourists to contend just with ... tourists. But these days there’s an abundance of tourists—the Louvre attracted a record 10.2 million gawkers last year, way more than any other museum, anywhere—meaning time spent staring at Mona Lisa’s eyes can be no more than the equivalent of a drive-by encounter, especially now that the Leonardo da Vinci portrait has been moved to temporary quarters 

(https://nyti.ms/2MeyNdn).

I’ve gazed upon the Mona Lise several times, the first being in August 1966 when I was 17 and visiting Paris for the first time. Accompanied by my cousin’s then husband, a struggling painter who spoke no English while I, despite two years of high school instruction, knew barely enough French to ask which way to the library (“Ou est la bibliotheque”), made my way through hall after hall of the Louvre. No doubt I passed by many works by renowned masters. Sadly, I couldn’t take advantage of my companion’s expert commentary. But as I wandered around the Louvre, mostly oblivious to the treasures before me, he did manage to point out the Venus de Milo standing amidst other statues, and, after I had walked past it, he brought me back to view the Mona Lisa. Back then she was treated like any other painting, hanging nondescriptly on a wall with other works of art. 

Red Scare: I spent more than a few minutes today, I sheepishly admit, entranced by the efforts of a grey squirrel to negotiate around a large inverted plastic funnel designed to prevent the rodent and his brethren from gaining access to the bird food I assiduously hang from trees in my side yard. Most of the time the enterprising squirrel backs away or falls to the ground without clutching the suspended cage holding the desired food. If he is successful, I shoo him away, admonishing him that the food is intended for the feathered, not the bushy tailed. 

The attempted incursion is mild compared to what is going on across the pond. Seems North American grey squirrels have taken over the British landscape and are threatening the existence of native born red squirrels, a more genteel species popularized in children’s books. The reds are about half the size of their trans-Atlantic cousins who are more aggressive food gatherers and who carry a disease the reds cannot withstand. 

It’s gotten so bad that in parts of the United Kingdom bounty hunters have been hired to kill grey squirrels. It’s a scenario a nativist like Donald Trump would embrace to safeguard against an unwanted immigrant horde (https://https://apple.news/A78Qbg70wT8-GP4bZSxE-nA).

Oy, Vey Ist Mir: If you are of a certain age and Jewish, there’s an ethnic ritual your parents practiced on you. Whenever a person of distinction, be he or she an entertainment celebrity, a scientist, a professional athlete, a politician, or any position, even a hoodlum, that brought you into the public eye, your parents would point out if they were Jewish. Younger readers may recognize what I am referring to if they are familiar with Adam Sandler’s Hanukkah song that highlights members of the tribe. 

Of course, not every high profile Jew elicited pangs of pride. Mobster Meyer Lansky was no source of chest thumping, though he did make life difficult for the pro-Nazi German-American Bund before World War II. Neither was Bernie Madoff a short time ago. And Jeffrey Epstein has clouded Jewish skies of late. Oy, the shame of it all. 

I’ve seen too many episodes of Homeland to categorically discount conspiracy theories surrounding how he was able to allegedly commit suicide in a federal lockup. I’m not willing to name whom I think might be behind Epstein’s demise, but I would definitely grill all the security guards at the Manhattan Metropolitan Correctional Center. Someone(s) had to be paid off. The key, as it was in Watergate, “Follow the money.” Someone is going to start spending dollars way beyond their pay grade. It might take years before the urge to splurge surfaces, but it will. It always does. 

Remembering An Icon

I woke up Sunday morning to the news another part of my youth had passed away.

Lonny Benamy was an iconic figure at Camp Columbia and Kfar Masada, two eight week sleep-away camps in upstate New York where I spent my teenage years. Lonny died Sunday morning after a four year bout with cancer.

I first met Lonny in 1962. I was 13, Lonny 18. He was the nature counselor, but to the urbanized (read that, sheltered) Jewish boys and girls of Brooklyn and Queens who mostly populated summer camp, he was the the flesh and blood image of Ari Ben Canaan of Exodus. Or more precisely, he was our Paul Newman, with wavy brown hair, piercing eyes, bronzed suntan and khaki shorts rolled up high on the thigh like any good Sabra would wear. He drove the camp’s red Jeep. He wasn’t afraid to play with snakes. He had a devilish grin, not too dissimilar from that of Jack Nicholson in The Shining. Naturally, he also wielded a big hunting knife.

As I matriculated from camper to waiter and counselor with off-site days-off privileges, I aspired like everyone else to be chosen for one of the five passenger seats in Lonny’s 1956 Buick. As one of his fellow Saturday afternoon volleyball enthusiasts, I was fortunate to secure a coveted spot most of the time when our six days off coincided. Those excursions were among the most memorable days of the summer.

Riding with Lonny on the narrow, winding upstate roadways was an adventure. You never knew when he might suddenly swerve. If his eagle eyes caught sight of a woodchuck, he’d do his darndest to run it over. Perhaps that’s what they taught him about farm pest control at Cornell’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. In his pre-seat belt car, it was everyone’s not so silent prayer that woodchucks stay invisible when Lonny drove by.

It was with Lonny I first went to the track, Monticello Raceway. After a day bumming around town, perhaps visiting other Jewish camps to drop in on friends, we’d get to the racetrack parking lot shortly before the 8 pm post-time. As we were still dressed in shorts, we’d jump out of the car and change into pants as fast as we could. There were no inhibitions when Lonny was around. There also was no guarantee I’d make it inside the harness racing track, as I was just 16 that first time. But with Lonny running interference, I made it through the gate. Making it back to camp by the midnight curfew was another form of racing. We’d stay at the track till nearly 11. The ride back to Elizaville was about an hour, mostly with no other cars on the road, and thankfully, with no woodchucks crossing our path.

In August, once Saratoga Racetrack opened, we’d go north, first to Lake George for some motorboating, then back down to Saratoga for the afternoon races. For Saratoga we had to bring along some decent clothing, as the meal at night invariably was at Tradewinds, a white tablecloth restaurant on Route 9 sitting by itself at the southern entrance to downtown Saratoga Springs. Fortunately, the trips to Saratoga came after Parents Visiting Day, so our wallets bulged with tip money. I’ve been back to Saratoga many times in the last 10 years. Tradewinds has long since closed. Its location is surrounded now by other restaurants and a Hilton Garden Inn hotel. I’ve eaten at the restaurant that took over the Tradewinds’ spot. The food is not as good.

As I sat at Lonny’s funeral service on Coney Island Avenue in Brooklyn, across the street from Yeshivah of Flatbush founded by Lonny’s uncle, Joel Braverman (Lonny was a biology teacher and the head of discipline for the high school—my alma mater—now located a few blocks away on Avenue J and East 16th St.), I reflected on another friend’s passing, another alumnus of Camp Columbia and Kfar Masada. Michael Lauchheimer died 20 years ago, Oct 4, 1990. Like my relationship with Lonny, it started out as camper and counselor. I was one of Michael’s counselors. When we met again some 10 years later, my daughter and his older son were in the same class at Solomon Schechter. We were now equals and became close friends. Like Lonny, Michael died during the Jewish holiday of Sukkot. One of the most joyful of holidays has become tinged again with sadness.